Handle With Care
by Jedi Buttercup
Summary: Ms. Summers might as well have worn a sign reading 'Danger to Life and Limb' in large, neon print. Fusion-fic.
1. Handle With Care

**Title**: Handle With Care

**Author**: Jedi Buttercup

**Rating**: T

**Summary**: _Ms. Summers might as well have worn a sign reading 'Danger to Life and Limb' in large, neon print_.

**Disclaimer**: The words are mine; the worlds are not. All your Buffy are belong to Joss Whedon and your Dresden Files to Jim Butcher.

**Spoilers**: Fusion-fic. Set between #7 "Dead Beat" and #8 "Proven Guilty" in the Dresden-verse; post-"Chosen" and somewhat AU-ish for Buffy.

**Notes**: For polgara_5, who requested "B:tVS/Dresden Files. Buffy/Harry, friends or pairing, book or TV. Something fluffy with a bit of substance." Ended up more substance than fluff, sorry!

* * *

The first several times I put on the gray cloak of Wardenship, I felt a little like a kid wearing a costume. It's one thing to accept that the White Council's wizarding law force really needs all the hands it can get to help take down the latest threat to supernatural law and order; another thing entirely to sit down with the paperwork and the files and all the _rules_ I'd only glimpsed before through the dark glass of Morgan's threatening behavior, and realize that all of a sudden I'm responsible for being the wagging finger of wizarding authority over half of freaking _America_.

Some days, I doubted I was capable of watching over even half of _Chicago_. When I thought back over all the mayhem that had gone down since I first set up shop as the city's only professional wizard, I knew I had been far luckier than I deserved. And it wasn't as though I had the best track record with authority figures. Or thinking before I leapt. Or any other qualifications, bar sheer kaboom experience, that would make my acquiring the title of regional commander look like any less of a desperate move on Luccio's part. When I looked at it like that, I could almost understand why Morgan had refused to give me any other Wardens to actually _command_ yet.

_Almost_. I wasn't going to let go of my determination to thwart Morgan's expectations just because I finally understood that his hostility toward me wasn't personal; the habit was much too ingrained. Hells Bells, I'd been spitting in his eye since I was sixteen; I wasn't about to stop now, even if the combined forces of the Red Court war, Kemmler's disciples, and the Corpsetaker's theft of Captain Luccio's body had converged to create the unlikely happenstance of his being my official boss.

Yeah, I wasn't looking forward to my first performance review. If they even had them in the Wardens-- I hadn't read that far in the official documentation yet.

I should probably move that up the list of my priorities, I thought, as I put the final touches on a pair of tiny pewter models. I kept meaning to, but between my duties as supernatural detective, consultant to the CPD's Special Investigations division, the cleanup leftover from the last major wizarding conflict in the city, and my own private projects, I hadn't had much time to just sit down and read. Especially when that reading material was a dusty compilation of arcane legal language nearly as heavy as Mister, my pet Sabretooth Housecat. Grouting floor tile was more entertaining.

And I should know; I'd had plenty of experience in home repair lately. After fielding the best efforts of a swarm of zombies to destroy my apartment, pretty much all of the furniture in the living room had needed replacing. The steel security door had taken some severe damage as well, and let's not even _mention_ the foulness my unwanted guests had left behind on the rugs. I'd decided it was time to finally put down an actual carpet, and spruce up the bathroom and kitchen with more appropriate flooring surfaces than plain concrete while I was at it. I was still only halfway through the tedious process, but I was pretty sure all the effort would be worth it when I was finally done. It wasn't the prettiest remodeling job ever, but at least it would be functional.

My efforts to make a dent in the inventory of the local Home Depot weren't limited to the reflooring effort, either. Lately, with the help of my friendly skull-bound lab assistant and spirit of intellect, Bob, I'd been taking steps to enhance my ability to locate and deal with any bad guys that came to stomp around on my turf. Or find lost pets. You know, whichever Warden-slash-detective pursuit might have priority in any given week.

I carefully eyed the placement of the new building models I'd just affixed to the large table that had formerly been my primary work surface in the lab, and made mental notes about which of their missing neighbors I should scout next out in the real Chicago. In my admittedly biased opinion, the loss of workspace was a fair trade for the benefit I'd get once my shiny new toy was completed.

Stray Chihuahuas aside, I'd been going after a succession of more and more dangerous vampires, warlocks, Faeries, and other assorted preternatural foes for years, and without the hefty collection of friends and acquaintances with their own degrees of badassery I'd somehow acquired over the years, I'd never have survived them all. I'd been stuck reacting rather than acting almost all of that time, and that was a dangerous situation for anyone, not least a wizard with a hot temper, more power than common sense, and a literal fallen angel whispering in his ear. This new tool would hopefully give me more discernment and breathing room when tracking down the bad guys.

At the moment, though, Little Chicago was mostly proving to be a huge drain on my time. I could spend hours down here lost in calculations, construction, and the tweaking of energy flows-- which, according to the wind-up clock I kept down in the lab, was about to make me late to my next appointment. It probably wouldn't be a good idea for me to show up unshaven, unwashed, and wrapped in flannel-- especially considering how that had worked out for me the _last_ time I'd tried it.

I sighed, then shed my working robe, hung it up on its hook, and climbed the stepladder up to the main room of my apartment. Mister stretched from his favorite perch atop one of my bookshelves-- currently standing several inches away from the wall, as I hadn't yet fixed the new baseboards in place-- and yawned at me, showing an impressive array of sharp teeth. On the floor beneath the bookcase, a shaggy Dogosaurus Rex lifted his head as well, staring pensively at me.

"I know, I know," I muttered to Mouse as I crossed the floor into the bedroom. "I'm hurrying."

I stepped carefully over the still-exposed tack strip where the bedroom's new carpeting butted up against the bathroom tiles, peeled off my clothes, and hurtled into the shower. My appointment was in Cleveland that evening, in about six and a half hours, and even in light traffic my trusty old multi-colored Volkswagen Beetle would have trouble covering the distance in that amount of time.

Cleveland, of all places. The choice of location still bothered me. The last time one of my teachers had spoken to me about the mysterious Watcher's Council, he'd given the impression that they were headquartered somewhere back in Jolly Old and primarily staffed with folk whose accents matched the décor. The girl on the phone, however, had been very American, and had referred to the offices there as their main center of operations. What could have prompted an organization so old and so hidebound to suddenly transfer operations to _my_ area of responsibility?

The cold, cold water sluicing down over me held no answers. I shivered violently as I stepped out and dried off, then headed for my wardrobe, mind already three steps ahead of what I was doing.

Not so my feet.

"Damn it!" I hissed through gritted teeth, hopping awkwardly back as a band of fire erupted across the sole of my right foot. I leaned back against the tiny sink cabinet, then folded my leg up to inspect it, a trickier maneuver than you might expect considering how tall I am and how small the space is. Tiny pinpricks of blood were already blooming across the callused skin. Stupid tack strip. Covering those suckers up was _definitely_ next on my remodeling to-do list.

I tended to the parallel rows of tiny wounds with the first-aid kit I kept under the sink, then limped back into the bedroom, more carefully this time. Some impression I was going to make. I threw on a white silk shirt-- an old standby, saved for those occasions on which I might face archaic weaponry, on the theory that the Mongols must have known what they were doing-- and a pair of dark slacks. Dark socks, heavy boots, my black leather duster, and my gray Warden cloak completed the ensemble. It might be monochromatic, but at least I didn't clash.

I checked the old Mickey Mouse clock in my bedroom again, shook my head, and left a quick note on the mantel for my half-brother. Thomas hadn't been around the apartment much of late, and hadn't seemed much interested in what I was up to when he was there (probably hoping that I wouldn't ask questions if he didn't), but I couldn't in good conscience leave the city without letting him know where to look for the body if I should happen to disappear.

Not that I thought I would. But you never knew. Especially when dealing with an organization old and widespread enough to be an independent signatory of the Unseelie Accords.

According to Ebenezar McCoy, the wizard who'd overseen the last few years of my apprenticeship, the Watchers were a group of lower-level practitioners and clued-in straights who'd been mucking around in the supernatural since the dawn of recorded human history. Like the Venatori Umbrorum and the Fellowship of St. Giles, two other independent organizations of nonwizards with paranormal connections, they were currently allied with the White Council. Unlike the Venatori or the Fellowship, however, they tended to restrict their help to informational assistance, and they never asked for physical aid in return. As a result, very little was known about their operations, other than the fact that they spent a lot of resources studying locations where the veil between our world and the spiritual realm of the NeverNever is worn particularly thin.

They called those locations Hellmouths. And until a couple of years ago, a little town named Sunnydale over in Ramirez' jurisdiction had been one of them. Before it had rather suddenly fallen into the earth.

I spared a few mental cursewords for Carlos' busy schedule-- I'd left several messages at his family's restaurant in L.A., hoping he'd be able to tell me more-- then gathered up the tools of my trade and headed out the door. Time was, I'd never have gone to a meeting loaded up with not only my kinetic force ring, shield bracelet, and pentacle necklace, but also my blasting rod, handgun, and wizard's staff; it was kind of overkill for most everyday situations, like carrying around a bazooka. But that was before I'd touched off a war and pissed off any number of powerful entities. Who was to say Ms. Summers wasn't beholden to one of them?

Regardless, she was still a member of an allied organization. And as it was part of my duties to be the ambassador of the White Council to any preternatural groups within my range of responsibility, I couldn't just ignore her. Besides, it was possible I was just being paranoid, wasn't it?

I tried to hold that thought in mind as I resecured the magical and mundane security measures behind me, then turned toward the Blue Beetle parked at the curb.

Perched on the hood, an unfamiliar blonde woman-- maybe Murphy's height, maybe a little taller-- looked back at me, head tilted in assessment.

Stars and stones, you'd think I'd know better than to jinx myself by now.

* * *

"Buffy Summers, I presume," I drawled, cautiously approaching the car.

She slid down to the ground as I approached, landing on dainty little high-spiked sandals as solidly as if they'd been work boots like my own. I'd only ever seen balance like that in supernatural entities before. Above the heels-- and the attached ribbons caressing their way up her shapely calves-- she wore a short skirt that compensated for its revealing length with conservative coloring, and a flowing, pale green blouse cut there and back again that matched her eyes. Tiny little chips of green fire dangled from cute earlobes, and her slim, muscled arms were neatly camouflaged with bangly bracelets; overall, she looked like Murphy on a dress-up day, only-- girlier.

She might as well have worn a sign reading 'Danger to Life and Limb' in large, neon print.

"So you're Harry Dresden," she replied, with wry, pursed lips. "Kind of tall, aren't you?"

"I suppose that depends on your perspective," I couldn't help saying, deliberately eyeing her from the top of her head-- were those _stakes_ tucked into her artfully arranged bun?-- to her petite, iridescently painted toes.

She snorted a laugh, then held out a small hand to shake. "Sorry to drop in on you like this, but since a friend had last-minute business out this way, I thought I'd save you some time. Good thing, too; you were leaving it kind of late, weren't you?"

Hells Bells, even her attitude reminded me of Murphy. "A wizard is never late, nor is he early," I replied in lofty tones as I shook her hand. "He arrives precisely when he means to."

"Nice try, Gandalf," she shot back, "but I don't even let Andrew get away with that, and he's the closest thing to a wizard we have on staff. You have to earn your tardiness privileges with me."

Clutching her warm, surprisingly callused hand in my own, I suddenly wanted to earn a whole lot more than that. It had been a long, long time since I had spent quality time with an attractive woman in a social situation. This was hardly a social situation, though, and I hastily thought chilly thoughts in an effort to squash down my libido. "I'll remember that," I said.

"Good," she said. "So. Got a place to meet?"

I looked back over my shoulder at the stairs down to my apartment, considering; I definitely wouldn't invite a complete stranger behind my wards, but it was interesting, I thought, that she hadn't even suggested it. She obviously knew a little something about thresholds and magical home protection. Fortunately, I _did_ have an alternate place in mind: the only bit of Accorded Neutral Ground in Chicago. The strictures of the Unseelie Accords would shield us equally there.

"McAnally's Pub sound all right?" I asked, testing to see if she knew it.

She did, if the brightness of her smile was any indication. "Sure, if Mac doesn't mind me avoiding his brew. I've heard good things about it, but me, supernatural business, and alcohol have always been extremely unmixy things."

"I'm sure I can drink enough for both of us," I said dryly, and couldn't resist getting in one more dig. "Or at least for two of _you_."

"Can you fight with that staff," she parried, the corners of her eyes crinkled with silent laughter, "or do you just use it to keep from falling over when the wind picks up?"

Somehow, I didn't think she meant _magic_ when she mentioned fighting. "A little," I said, dipping my head in acknowledgement at her return jibe. "A friend of mine has been teaching me aikido and quarterstaff moves, when I have the time to practice."

"Oh, goodie," Summers beamed toothily. "Think you'll have time to spar later, then?"

I chalked up a couple more points in the 'Danger, Harry Dresden!' column, and resolved to change the topic post haste. No one that petite and that confident in her own fighting skills was worth facing in even combat; long, _long_ experience had taught me to take refuge in the better part of valor.

"Anyway, it's a little early for Mac's," I said, clearing my throat, "but he does a mean steak lunch, and if you like lemonade, he makes the kind with lemonade chips instead of regular icecubes."

Her smile didn't dim; at least, not until I moved to hold open the passenger door of the Beetle for her and she got a good look at the interior. I hadn't _quite_ got around to having my mechanic fix it up yet-- actually keeping it running had been more of a priority-- and the temporary seating was still an uncomfortable construction of plywood and two-by-fours. Dresden Remodeling Services, Take One.

"Sounds... like a plan," Summers said, raising her eyebrows as she gingerly stepped into the vehicle. "Mold demons?" she asked, eyeing the plank supplementing the remains of the plastic dashboard.

"Mold demons," I confirmed, impressed, as I folded myself into the driver's side and turned the key in the ignition. "You know, you're the first person that's guessed that right away."

She shuddered gracefully. I tried not watch the effects it had on the drape of her blouse.

"Seen one mold demon, seen them all," she said. "Talk to me after you've spent an entire afternoon down in the sewers tracking slime demons."

Curiouser and curiouser. The more I talked to Ms. Summers, the less she fit the mental profile I'd had in mind after the phone call. For someone who looked so young-- maybe mid-twenties, though in this biz that often didn't mean as much as you'd think-- she talked and held herself like a professional, despite the bright smiles and snazzy wardrobe. Either she was some_thing_ I'd never encountered before, or she'd been walking the walk since she was a little kid, or maybe both; either way, she definitely merited careful handling.

"So. Care to tell me exactly why you wanted to meet me, or do you want to wait until we get there?" I asked conversationally, as I guided the car through the busy streets.

She was silent for a long moment; then she sighed. "The Watchers haven't exactly had the closest relationship with your people in the past," she sighed. "And I have plenty of personal reasons to hate everything that cloak you're wearing stands for. But Giles-- I guess you'd call him our boss-- says you're not exactly a typical member of the establishment, and he thought it would be polite to do a face-to-face before we kick up any more dust in your territory."

I was seriously going to skin Ramirez the next time I saw him for not checking his messages; I could really have used some up-to-date intel before going into this meeting. "Personal reasons?" I asked, carefully.

She turned and stared straight at me before answering. "I know you've been under the Doom of-- Damn-it, or Democracy, or whatever," she said. "Giles says it means you broke one of the Seven Laws sometime in the past, but they let you live because someone stood up for you."

I winced, and at more than the mispronunciation; I was pretty sure I knew where this was going. "I killed with magic, in self-defense," I admitted quietly. "A wizard who'd known my mother took me in and made sure I unlearned all my bad habits."

"Willow didn't have anyone to stand up for _her_," Summers said, bitterly.

Willow? As in Rosenberg? I glanced over at my passenger, startled, and saw the tears standing in her eyes. Damn; if she'd been Rosenberg's friend, I was surprised she was talking to me at all.

I hadn't known that the warlock in question was attached to the Watchers, but I'd heard all about her execution; she'd broken not only the First Law, but also the Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth, and had made a run at the Seventh before the local Wardens found out and put her down with extreme prejudice. As thin as the Council was stretched at the moment in dealing with the war with the Red Court, a lot of young people with power were slipping through the cracks like she had; it often started with something simple, like breaking into or manipulating someone's mind with the best of intentions, but before long the corrupting effects of black magic drove the wizard in question entirely over the edge. Necromancy, murder, raising a temple of Proserpexa-- I couldn't imagine how painful and terrifying it must have been for Summers to have a front-row seat to her friend's meltdown.

The standard line-- that warlocks that far gone were almost never capable of rehabilitation, and that putting them out of their misery was the only way to prevent worse problems in future-- was on the tip of my tongue, but I held it in. It obviously wasn't what she wanted to hear, and the goal today was to _establish_ a working relationship, not to destroy all possibility of one.

"I'm sorry," I said, sincerely. "I was lucky. If it hadn't been for-- well, let's just say that under normal circumstances I'd never have been made a Warden."

"I know," she said, quietly. "Hence the asking for you, specifically."

I cleared my throat. "Any other topics of conversation I should avoid?" I asked.

"More like, what shouldn't you?" Summers answered, tiredly. "Although-- if you've heard anything about Angelus or William Malvora--"

I blinked, trying to decide if I wanted to know why there was wistfulness and grief in her tone while discussing a pair of White Court vamps from the House known for feeding on human fear.

"Sorry, no," I said, shrugging, and made a mental note to pass the question on to Thomas, if I managed to catch up with him anytime soon.

"We should probably stick to business, then," she said with a sigh.

Silence reigned in the car until we parked, then walked to McAnally's; we took one of the empty round tables near the back wall, and I let her have the seat that faced the door. We made small talk about the pub's structure-- the reason for the theme of thirteen in its furnishings, and the details of the carvings visible on the columns that rose up out of the floor-- until the food was ready, then settled in to enjoy.

She was fun to talk to, once we were off the heavier subjects; the number of beings she recognized from the carvings (and often had awkwardly hilarious stories about) was amazing, and I couldn't help but share a few stories in return. I was careful to leave out most of the delicate details, but it was strangely relaxing to talk shop with someone as quippy as I was who knew exactly what I meant when I wrinkled my nose over the grosser and more hilarious corners of the monster-hunting business. The tale of the chlorofiend-- excuse me, _plant monster_-- was a big hit with her, especially the fact that it was my petite policewoman friend who'd taken it down.

"So that's why you didn't give me a hard time," Summers said, laughing, at the end of the story. "I usually get dismissed as a brainless blonde right off the bat, especially by people who know my name."

"All hail the power of Woman," I agreed, raising my second bottle of Mac's best to her.

She smiled warmly at me, and it lit up her whole being; she fairly glowed with it. Another stab of longing went through me at the sight, and I blew out a breath.

"So. Kicking up dust in my territory?" I reminded her.

"Right." She straightened in her seat, merriment fading into business-like blandness. "How much do you know about the formation of new Hellmouths?"

Oh. Oh _Hell_.

I thought back over the rising tide of dark events in my corner of the country over the last decade, cross-referenced with the sudden dip in reports regarding Cleveland since the Watcher's Council had apparently moved in, and put them together with the little I'd heard of Hellmouths in the past. No _wonder_ it had been so easy for Kravos and Mavra to weaken the barrier between the NeverNever and Chicago a few years back. If that was simply spillover from Cleveland's rising troubles...

Somehow, I had a feeling I'd be seeing a lot more of Summers in the years to come.

"Tell me more," I said.

-x-


	2. Risky Business

**Title**: Risky Business

**Author**: Jedi Buttercup

**Disclaimer**: The words are mine; the worlds belong to Whedon and Butcher.

**Rating**: T

**Summary**: _The day after my first meeting with Summers, Ramirez finally got my messages and called me back._ 2000 words.

**Spoilers**: Fusion-fic; post-"Chosen" AU for Buffy, post-#7 "Dead Beat" for Dresden Files

**Notes**: Exploring a few more details of this fusion....

* * *

The day after my first meeting with Summers, Ramirez finally got my messages and called me back.

Some of what he had to tell me I would really like to have known before taking that meeting. The rest of it, I was just as glad I hadn't. For one thing, I'd have been a hell of a lot warier in those first moments if I'd known of her connection to Willow Rosenberg, or the bulky police record she'd accumulated-- or the rather sketchy nature of her love life.

I've never really understood why anyone sane, possessed of free will, and aware of the consequences would pursue a romantic relationship with a White Court vampire, not even after knowing Thomas; and she'd dated not one, but two of them. Rather than being broken _by_ them, though, she'd ended up breaking _them_, in a sequence of Romeo and Juliet-style dramatics fit to make a playwright weep. Any human being that could manage _that_ practically demanded handling with the supernatural equivalent of asbestos gloves-- and that wasn't even taking into account her enhanced physical abilities.

Fortunately for me, I'd gone in only mildly alarmed, and treated her just like any other possibly dangerous potential ally. It had only taken one shared meal and conversation for me to realize just how disastrous it could have gone, had I greeted her layered in defensive spells and carefully chosen words. I shudder to think what she'd have made of, say, Morgan. Or the Merlin.

Ebenezar, maybe; the next time I ran into my former mentor on Warden business, I'd have to mention Summers to him. He might have been lying to me about what he really was for as long as I'd known him, but ironically enough, the fact that the only Council wizard with a license to kill had taken in a kid everyone else had already written off and trained him well enough that he was now an agent of the Council himself, made him more trustworthy in this situation, not less. Surely the Blackstaff had run into a Slayer or two in all his long years, and he'd be able to tell me if this one was as unique as she seemed, without my having to worry about him blabbing about her to either the Merlin's hostile little coterie or the Black Council lurking in the background. Ramirez had already made his opinion clear, and I wasn't sure who else among the White Council I could trust.

_Even for you, Dresden, getting mixed up with this girl is risky business. She's pure poison for practitioners; every single one that's come into contact with her has been killed by vampires, turned warlock, shot, stabbed, or tortured at the very least. She may have saved the world a few times, but she's seriously bad mojo, man. You'd better watch your back._

With that kind of opening, I'd known her official story was going to be interesting to hear; and it was. The Council's line on Summers, and her interdimensional hotspot of a former hometown, could be summarized like this:

_There are certain times and places where the barrier between our world and the NeverNever is thinner than others. Halloween is one of the primary temporal examples of this effect; Warden Dresden, as observed by Wardens Ramirez, Morgan, and Luccio, provided a rather conclusive example of the phenomenon last autumn. At no other time would any wizard, much less a reckless amateur in only his third decade of practice, have been able to summon enough necromantic energy to pull an animus as old as that of a tyrannosaur back across the divide._

(Ramirez' words, from the official report regarding Sunnydale, not mine).

_Locations such as the former town of Sunnydale, California, deal with that type of effect on a more permanent basis. The common term is Hellmouths; an appropriate reference to the chaos, fear, and death that such an overlap of energies tends to generate. Buffy Summers first moved to Sunnydale in her mid teens, the prime age for a young human with supernatural ancestry to begin to awaken to her powers, and promptly became the focus of a Watcher's Council group combating the local Hellmouth's effects on a nightly basis. It is unknown precisely what heritage her ancestry includes, but its effects are clear: she is stronger than the average human, and much faster-- deadly and effective with any combination of weaponry and martial arts. __Very_ effective. The collective opinion of the local Wardens had been to let her act, and to stay out of her way as much as possible.

(Surprisingly pragmatic of them. It was a pity most of them hadn't survived the recent Red Court attacks; it would have been helpful to learn the ropes from other Wardens who didn't toe the ultrarestrictive Senior Council line. Of course, if they _had_, I wouldn't actually be a Warden at all-- and I probably never would have met Summers in the first place.)

_Unfortunately, Ms. Summers wasn't the only one in her circle of friends with supernatural ancestry. For a time, she was romantically linked with the White Court vampire known as Angelus-- an infamous member of House Malvora who'd taken the death curse of a dying Gypsy wizardess in the late eighteen hundreds and been compelled to feel guilt over every action he took to harm a human from that day forward. Unfortunately, Malvora are as sensitive to the effects of love as any other White Court vampire, and his association with Ms. Summers eventually drove them apart and shattered the lingering remnants of the curse. Angelus then went on a bloody rampage, drinking in all the fear he'd been denied the pleasure of causing for over a century, and was only brought up short months later by the death curse of another member of his most famous victim's clan. Janna Kalderash had been one of the rare practitioners able to reign in her power effectively enough to operate modern technology, and the Wardens had inserted her into the local school system in an effort to keep a covert eye on Ms. Summers' operation._

(So much pain compressed into so few words. Summers hadn't discussed any of that with me directly, but my half-brother was a Raith; I knew enough about White Court vampires now to understand just how deeply the emotions involved must have run. The part of me that still mourned my separation from Susan ached just thinking about it.)

_Ms. Kalderash's lover-- who was also Summers' mentor, and a minor practitioner himself-- never quite recovered from either her deception, or her death. Nor did Summers. And things worsened as the years progressed. She faced down several powerful warlocks who'd caused significant trouble before the White Council could intervene, including the one whose partnership with an unspecified minor deity apparently led to the town's destruction; she'd thwarted an ascension akin to the Darkhallow Kemmler's disciples had attempted to initiate in Chicago; she'd tamed Angelus Malvora's grandson, William, when he'd come to town intent on taking control of the Hellmouth's supernatural community; she'd even been killed in the process of defeating another capricious minor deity who'd attempted to use the Hellmouth in a ritual to restore itself to its former heights of power. And that was when the worst had happened: one of Summers' friends broke the Fifth Law of Magic in a successful attempt to bring her back._

(I'd already heard about the rest of Rosenberg's downward spiral; most of the White Council had, though Summers' name, and the fact that she'd miraculously _survived_ her own resurrection in more or less perfect condition, had not been widely publicized. Probably to reduce the chances of some other kid with more power than sense being inspired to try it.)

_After Rosenberg's execution, Summers' group grew even more insular than before, and until the astonishing explosion of magic that first ripped, then reknit the fabric of the NeverNever in Sunnydale and collapsed the town in the process, very little is known about her activities that year. A number of deaths and explosions world-wide unlinked to the ongoing war with the Red Court seem to have coincided with the migration of new associates to the town; but as most of those young women were apparently killed in the final confrontation, and no Council wizard has managed to successfully integrate with the group since Ms. Kalderash's death, it seems unlikely that the full story will ever be known. Exteme caution is advised in any future contact with this so-called Slayer or her companions._

Listening to Ramirez' report was like staring at that picture of the vase that was also two faces; I could see why the Council was so paranoid about this Slayer, despite-- and also because of-- her impressive record, but trying to match that image with the young woman I'd met and broken bread with threatened to cause severe cognitive dissonance. It just didn't fit.

I couldn't remember the last time I'd had so much fun simply talking shop with someone other than Bob involved in the preternatural community. It was so easy to get all caught up in treating magic, and all it could do for both good and ill, as simply a tool, rather than what it actually was: the stuff of life itself, generated from the interaction of nature and the elements, and from the energy of all living beings. That might be half the trouble with the White Council, actually, right there.

For all her failures, and all the pain lurking in the shadows of her moss-green eyes, Buffy Summers was still capable of passion, respect, and even laughter for the complicated workings of the supernatural world. She had taken her cursed, unwanted heritage and gradually turned it from the bludgeon against all things _other_ the old Watchers had intended her to be into a scalpel, trimming away the truly harmful beings she encountered and leaving the entities and practitioners of murkier allegiance alone. She was willing to reach out and accept the help of almost anyone who might assist her in the name of justice and preservation of life, regardless of official disapproval or personal pain.

I could respect that even in an opponent, never mind an ally. And it certainly didn't hurt that this ally came wrapped in a petite, lithe, well-dressed form that'd had the other patrons in McAnally's drooling and giving me envious glances all evening. Long acquaintance with Murphy had taught me to look at the face before the cleavage when speaking to a woman worthy of respect, but that didn't make me blind, and Summers, from carefully-coiffed hair to littlest painted toe, was more than pleasing to the eye.

Maybe she had been bad luck for the practitioners who'd helped her in the past; but then, much the same could be said for my non-wizardly acquaintances, and that hadn't stopped either of us from doing our jobs. It would take time before we could trust one another fully; but in the meantime, I'd gained a strong enough sense of her principles and abilities to strike a tentative agreement with her.

From now on, when I discovered something "Hellmouthy" in my territory, I'd give her a call; and if she ran into anything that fell on the wizardly side, she'd forward it on. With negotiable additions of "monster-fighting backup", to use her words, when and if events slid into a lull for either one of us.

It would be nice to have a seasoned, formidable fighter-- and potential friend-- on call that wasn't Kincaid. I had to say, though, the thing I looked forward to most was the look on Murphy's face the first time she and Summers were in the same room. Either the universe would explode from so much pocket-sized badassery in one place, or they'd become immediate best friends; I wasn't sure which potential outcome scared me more.

Either way-- I had a feeling my world would never be the same.

-~-


	3. Loaded For Bear

**Title**: Loaded For Bear

**Author**: Jedi Buttercup

**Rating**: T

**Disclaimer**: The words are mine; the worlds are not.

**Summary**: _The second time I found Ms. Summers leaning against a vehicle outside my apartment, I was considerably less surprised- and considerably more relieved- to see her_. 2700 words.

**Spoilers**: Mid-"Proven Guilty" for Dresden Files; post-series fusion-AU for Buffyverse

**Notes**: Partially from the Twistedshorts August Challenge, and a request from polgara_5; set in the "Handle With Care" universe. Skims over much of the ending of PG, highlighting a few AU touches and character progression.

* * *

The second time I found Ms. Summers leaning against a vehicle outside my apartment, I was considerably less surprised- and considerably more relieved- to see her.

She was also much more sensibly dressed- for her, anyway- in an ensemble of rugged dark jeans, a long-sleeved green silk shirt, and a pair of little black leather boots with two inch heels. Which was just as well. Much as I'd appreciated the acres of creamy skin and gentle curves of feminine flesh over lean muscle she'd had on display on her previous visit, this wasn't exactly a social occasion- and she wasn't the only tough blonde within ten yards of me, either. The cost-benefit analysis of my devolving into drooling male at that juncture would not have been pretty.

"Buffy," I said, nodding to her as I approached Charity's minivan. "Good to see you. I wasn't sure Thomas would be able to reach you in time."

"He said it was urgent," she shrugged, then stepped away from the van. "Sounded like my kind of party." Something long and rigid moved with her as she approached, attached to her back; a scabbard of some kind, though I couldn't get a good look at the weapon from that angle.

Charity stiffened at my side at the young woman's flippant attitude, but her voice was coolly polite as she stepped forward, hand outstretched. "I'm Charity Carpenter," she said. "You're a friend of Harry's?"

Buffy smiled at her, a narrow, wry flash of teeth that was nonetheless about five times as warm as Charity's tone. "More like professional acquaintance with an option on friendship; I just met him a few months ago," she said, trading a firm grip with the older woman. Charity was several inches taller and much more visibly muscular than Buffy; but I had my suspicions about Buffy's ancestry, and she was at least as experienced in hand-to-hand combat as Murphy. She didn't back down.

"I'm Buffy Summers," she continued, as two sets of knuckles whitened. "I work with the Watcher's Council out of Cleveland; your husband's helped us out before, and I've had some experience with phages."

Charity relaxed a little at that, trading a nod with her. "Yes; I remember hearing about the Watchers. You work with a lot of girls Molly's age, don't you? Thank you for coming," she said.

"No problem." Buffy's smile gentled around the edges as they let go of one another's hands. "A lot of us were seventeen and in over our heads, once. We'll get your daughter back."

Murph had been suspiciously quiet while mother and Slayer introduced themselves; literally suspicious, eyeing the younger woman from head to toe with thoughtfully pursed lips. I winced. I'd told her a while back that I'd met one of the Watchers' key fighters, and then committed the epic fail- Billy's wording- of describing Buffy to her as Kincaid levels of badass in a Murphy-sized container.

I had _not_ meant to imply that there was anything inferior about the contents of the original, but I can be a little slow, sometimes. She hadn't let me forget it for weeks.

"And you must be Lieutenant Murphy," Buffy said next, turning to the five-foot-and-change presence at my side.

Buffy had _maybe_ an inch on her, minus heels; as they faced each other, hands out like weapons drawn, they looked as close to equals, visually, as I'd ever seen anyone with the petite director of Chicago's Special Investigations. Buffy was wearing more makeup, maybe, and her clothes had the edge in terms of price tag; but Murph made up for any monetary disadvantage with the sex-and-danger quotient inherent in a chick wearing guns. The blockbuster level of steel-jacketed cuteness going on in that handshake was going to live on in my memory for a long, long time.

I exchanged a quick glance with Thomas over the girl's heads, just to be sure it wasn't just me.

It wasn't. He raised an eyebrow back, a vague air of Hunger seeping into his expression, more than a trace of silver showing in the brightness of his gaze.

"Ms. Summers," Murphy replied, politely. "I've heard a lot about you from Harry."

Buffy grinned at her tone. "I'll be you have. Which story did he tell, the one about the Black Court vamp and the totally egregious argument in fake Latin? Or the time he came to Cleveland on what was supposed to be Warden business and ended up covered in syrup and feathers in the Council House kitchen...?"

Murphy cocked an eyebrow at that last. "Do tell," she murmured to Buffy.

I replied with an exaggeratedly innocent expression. A guy's got to keep _some_ secrets, doesn't he?

Buffy laughed. "Later, I promise."

"So which stories did he tell about _me_?" Murphy continued, intrigued.

"Enough to be glad you're coming with," Buffy replied, sobering again as she steered the conversation back to the order of the day. "Pretty smooth, taking down an agent of Faerie with a chainsaw. Too bad we can't take one with us today."

Murphy smirked. Yeah; she'd pretty much worn the monster-kicking boots in that particular endeavor. Tonight's Winter hunt wasn't going to be anywhere near that simple, but it was better to go in confident and loaded for bear than tiptoeing tremulously through the snowflakes. Buffy's years of experience were showing again; she'd been in the monster-hunting business at least as long as I had, despite being several years younger. I was _very_ glad she'd made it in time to join us.

"And this is Thomas," I said, making the final introduction as my half-brother stepped forward.

Unlike Charity and Murphy, however, he stopped several feet shy of her, inclining his head respectfully. "Slayer," he said.

She stiffened in surprise- and the sheathed weapon on her back suddenly lit the air around her with a tingling weight of energy that reminded me of nothing so much as the spiritual presence of Charity's husband's blade, the faith-imbued sword known as _Amoracchius_. "Vampire," she replied, warily.

I swallowed. Yeah, I'd kind of forgotten to share that tidbit before. "Is that going to be a problem?" I asked, carefully.

She turned to me, pupils wide and dark with surging adrenaline. "You trust him?"

I shrugged, as casually as I could manage. "He doesn't exactly sparkle, but you could call him a vegetarian," I said.

The tension in the air ratcheted down a notch at that; she snorted, and the watchful presence of the blade she wore dimmed again until it was almost unnoticeable. Almost, but not quite; it really did remind me of the swords borne by the Knights of the Cross, now that I knew it was there.

"I'll take your word on that for now," she said calmly, and nodded back at Thomas.

Introductions over with, we all piled in the minivan and headed out. I rode shotgun; Murphy and Buffy took the middle row of seats, and Thomas rode in the back, watching our six while I followed the magical trail toward Molly Carpenter.

It was going to be a rocky ride. I knew I'd be more than grateful for each one of my companions by the time we were through.

* * *

From the moment Buffy drew the thing she called the Scythe from the sheath on her back, I could hardly keep my eyes off her and on my own path through the battle.

It wasn't as though I'd never seen a blesséd weapon in action. I'd fought alongside Charity's husband more times than I could count, and I'd been within a bladeslength of the other Knights of the Cross when the Denarians had come to my city baying after the Shroud of Turin. The silvery light and humming aura each Sword emits in battle is unmistakable, imbued with a power wrought of the pure essence of _belief_ that transforms simple steel into the glory of God-touched metal.

The difference was, though there was no denying Buffy's weapon worked along the same principles, it was equally clear it drew from another source of Power entirely. One that did not ask its followers to turn the other cheek.

An umber light radiated from the sharp edge of the blade, a color that left the taste of rich loam and withered leaves on the back of my tongue. Neither the frigid dearth of Winter nor the virile warmth of Summer, its glow parted the flesh of Mab's minions like wheat before the harvest sickle. It was clearly a weapon meant to oppose the shagnasties on their _own_ turf: a blade meant for the guardians who stand _within_ the Gates to the Nevernever, rather than stamping out intrusions on our side.

Buffy spun and dodged, a focused avatar of destruction: dancing in the chain mail Charity had lent her as though it weighed less than tissue paper, the polished edge of the blade licking along the Scarecrow's limbs to draw forth rivers of green-white fire. Wherever it moved, she was there first. Wherever the dark blaze and low murmuring tone of the Scythe touched grotesquely shaped flesh, the ancient fetch flinched away from it in pain.

I'd _known_ what a Slayer's role was, intellectually, before that battle. Hells Bells, I'd seen her fight Black Court vampires before, and she'd sliced and diced the minions guarding the old theater on the other side without so much as breaking a sweat. But watching her wield that eldritch weapon in the heart of Winter's home, I began to get an idea of the true freight her title carried. The Scythe had flared into livid light as we broke free of the fetches below to follow Charity up to the parapet, illuminating a garden of Fae trapped in ice- and limning Buffy's profile with the color of drying blood. She looked fierce, in that light: both more and less than human, and as far from the laughing girl I'd broken bread with as it was possible to be.

I wished I'd had her with me the year before, facing the Erlking; or even better, back when the former Summer Lady had lost the plot and tried to destroy the balance between Seelie and Unseelie. And no wonder, in retrospect. Had the heart of Faerie ever opened so near to the formation of a new Hellmouth before?

The hair standing up on the back of my neck as I whipped my blasting rod into position and unleashed another _Forzare_ owed at least as much to the horrified speculations ticking over in the back of my mind as it did to the adrenaline-fueled exertion of the ongoing battle. Whatever was stirring in the supernatural world- whether the apparent traitor in the White Council had caused it or was simply harnessing the chaos it provided as a natural amplifier to his work- I had a sneaking suspicion we had barely begun to see the tip of the iceberg.

But mid-fight was _not_ the time to be panicking about some distant future. I summoned every erg of energy I could get from the scraped-thin ache of my magical reserves as Buffy and a broadsword-wielding Charity fenced the thing away from Charity's daughter. As strong as they both were, even with Buffy's Chosen blade in her hands, the powerful fetch could probably endure long enough to outlast them. But they _could_ keep the thing busy: intercepting lashes of vines aimed at each other, tag-teaming to hack at the downward arch of its foot when it moved to flatten Molly, and generally keeping it too distracted to focus on what _I_ was doing.

Of course, by the time I realized I was too tired to feel wonder _or_ fear, and connected that that calmness with a corresponding weakening of the Scarecrow's abilities, I was already running critically low on my own resources. But we were all still standing, thanks to the efforts of two of the toughest women I had ever known, and after I drew on the Summer fire in Lily's gift to blast the fetch off the parapet of Arctis Tor I managed to save enough back to hurry us out of the citadel in advance of the wave of slowed time that would have trapped us there as gift-wrapped presents for Winter's army.

Of such things- nails disguised as hours preserved and wounds averted- are kingdoms lost and princesses saved. If we'd been even a few minutes slower, caught in the edges of Maeve's 'helping hand' like flies in amber, I hate to think what the consequences might have been for us when we finally left the Nevernever. A little less rest, a little more desperation; who knows what fall-out for Murphy and the tiny flock sheltered with Father Forthill, and my own clarity of mind when the time came to face the Council.

Regardless, by the end of the next evening I had a new apprentice cleaning up in my shower; forty young wizards had been saved by her father's hand; and I stood in the open doorway of my apartment with Buffy, trying to think of a way to send her off that wouldn't trip off my tongue with a thud and drag down our 'acquaintanceship' with it.

I'd suspected she might pay a visit to find out how things had wrapped up, since she'd wanted nothing to do with any meeting of the White Council. I didn't blame her for _that_. But her timing could have been better- and I had no clue what to say to her.

"So. Fun day, huh," she prompted me, weariness etching lines at the corners of changeable green eyes.

I tried to picture her again as the friend I'd been so glad to see when she'd arrived at Thomas' call; as the lively, bantering object of mystery I'd shared a table with at Mac's the first day we met. But I kept seeing the flat, grim curve of her mouth backlit by her unholy weapon instead, and feeling the strength of her grip on my arm as she'd pulled me past a crucified and groaning Lloyd Slate when I'd wanted to stop and investigate what had happened to the former Winter Knight.

Between that dissonance, and the left-over stress from my conversation with Michael about Lasciel after the meeting, I was too unsettled to smile at her half-hearted joke. I couldn't help but wonder what she saw when she looked at _me_, too, after everything; I knew she'd seen more of my own darker side that week than I'd shown her in the months since we'd met.

And maybe I should have realized it sooner, but it was the little thread of embarrassed worry that followed on the heels of that thought that really put the cherry on my sundae of squirming discomfort. I wanted her to think well of me. I wanted to think well of _her_. Stars and stones, I wasn't a teenager anymore, where the hell was this all coming from?

I flushed, heat prickling under the five o'clock shadow on my cheeks, and cleared my throat. "Yeah," I said. "Thanks for coming- I have a feeling things would've gone a lot worse without your help."

"Oh, I don't know." She gave me a lopsided smile. "I think you would've made it through just fine. You're one of the stubbornest people I know."

"Still..." I said.

She shrugged petite shoulders. "No, I get it. I was glad to help." Then she reached up to wrap her arms around as much of my shoulders as she could reach. "I can tell you have plans," she added, "at least I hope you do or I'll kick your ass later for not asking me in. I'll call you later, okay?"

That sounded alarmingly like 'I want to talk to you' to me. But I returned the farewell hug with equal intensity, and stayed in the doorway, watching until she passed beyond the limits of my wards.

Then I shoved the door closed, took a seat by the fire, and settled in to await Molly's inevitable attempt to seduce me.

...Which fairy tale am I living in again?

No wait, don't tell me. I think I'd prefer to be surprised by the ending.

-x-


	4. A Spirit of All Compact of Fire

**Title**: A Spirit of All Compact of Fire

**Author**: Jedi Buttercup

**Disclaimer**: The words are mine; the worlds belong to Whedon and Butcher.

**Rating**: T

**Summary**: _"And your current intentions...?" Buffy asked without missing a beat. "...Are to ask a very lovely woman who has every right to tie me into a pretzel whether she'd like to have dinner with me instead," I ventured._ 4600 words.

**Spoilers**: B:tVS AU/Dresden Files novels; post-series and post-"White Night". Part of the Handle With Care fusion-verse.

**Notes**: 24 Days of Ficmas, Day 24 (finally): For FaithUnbreakable. Prompt, Harry and Buffy and a date in the Handle With Care 'verse. Title's a Shakespeare quote.

* * *

After the dust finished settling from the White Court upheaval, I took a drive to Cleveland.

It wasn't on the list of cities Elaine had given me, where the White Court malcontents had made a point of culling minor practitioners for their hideous plot. San Diego, San Jose, Austin, Seattle- most of the reported deaths had been on the West Coast. But I knew the Watcher's Council still had contacts out there, and that even if they _had_ lost people in Cleveland they may not have publicized it. They had even more reason to avoid grey cloaks than most; so I wasn't sure what I'd find when I arrived.

I was carefully not thinking about the possibility that like most of Chicago's practitioners, they may have thought Harry Dresden, Professional Wizard and Part-Time Warden, had been involved with the deaths. Buffy and I weren't actually _dating_ or anything- though not for lack of desire on my part- and she _did_ have her own full-time supernatural organization to run. Given those qualifiers, I hadn't really let myself worry about it until I'd paused in the middle of one of our Paranet planning sessions to wonder if she'd want to be included and realized that it had been weeks since I'd last heard from her.

I'd kind of got in the habit of calling her after my minor cases to mock the weirdness of our business. Or tease her about her adventures in administration. Or practice my Latin with her mentor. I'm not sure Rupert Giles actually _approves_ of my friendship with his charge, but he's generally politer than most of the senior wizards on the White Council, and despite his relative lack of power he's nearly as exhaustive a resource as Bob. Especially on the subject of unruly teenagers. He'd been a big help since I'd taken on Molly.

But I'd only spoken to answering machines and secretaries since just before Murphy had hired me to investigate a set of suspicious suicides in Chicago- and I hadn't even done that since the ghoul attack on Thomas' boat. After that little dance of gunfire and ice, I'd picked up the phone to warn her... and then remembered rather abruptly that Buffy had once dated among the Malvora, the branch of White Court vampires that fed on human fear. And the Malvora were definitely part of the problem.

I'd told myself I hadn't wanted to dredge up bad memories for her. But it was just as plausible that her people had been targeted, too, for that very reason- and that she'd fingered me as the culprit, just like all the others who'd seen a tall, pale man in a grey cloak and assumed the worst.

Or that _she_ had been a target. She might be the most deadly thing I've ever seen with her Scythe unsheathed in her hands, but no one can be on guard every second of the day... and we all have our weak spots. If Vittorio Malvora had pulled one of the clan's wayward sons in on his scheme...

I remembered the look on her face when I'd seen her at her fiercest, remote as starlight and limned in autumn flame atop the ramparts of Arctis Tor. But then I pictured her facing someone she'd loved over that blade... and the stern image broke down in my thoughts. The woman who'd thrown her head back and laughed in delight when I got caught in the middle of her sister's prank on their publicist slash chef- and let me just say, I haven't looked at a pancake the same since- didn't strike me as the type who'd anticipate an old lover's betrayal, seasoned Slayer or not.

Buffy had asked me, once, if I knew the names Angelus or William Malvora. Ramirez' report had filled me in on their connection to her, but not their ranking within the White Court- and I'd never got around to asking Thomas about them. My half-brother has a Juliet of his own; I hadn't felt like rubbing the situation in his face. I sincerely hoped I wouldn't come to regret that oversight.

The Council House was still standing when I got there; I decided to take that as a good sign. I hadn't visited frequently enough to know who drove what, but the cars parked out front looked familiar, and lights glowed in several of the windows. It was early evening, but the Watchers' business hours were frequently even more eccentric than mine, so that was another point in favor of business as usual.

I took a deep breath, then let it out again to calm my nerves. I might have, maybe, occasionally, been accused of impulsive behavior, but you can't make it through magical training without learning a lot about meditation and focus, and there was every chance that I was making mountains out of molehills. An awful lot of molehills, admittedly. But: perspective. That's not something I'm very good at, either.

I squared my shoulders under my duster- Buffy's always teasing me about slouching, though given the foot and half difference in our heights you'd think she wouldn't mind- and rang the bell.

Thirty seconds later, a girl a couple of years older than Molly with long dark hair and blue eyes threw the door open, scowling at me with her hands on her hips. "You," she said.

There was no use trying an innocent expression on a seasoned wielder of the canine eyes. I grinned at her, carefully not exactly meeting her gaze, and several tense knots in my shoulders started to unwind a little at this further evidence of normalcy.

"Me," I said. "Hey, Dawn. Is your sister around?"

She tossed a shiny fall of hair over one shoulder and crossed her arms, affecting indignation. "I don't know. Do you mean is she in the building, or are you asking whether she wants to talk to the guy who nearly got himself killed last week and _didn't even tell her he was going to fight vampires?_"

Put that way... I thought it over a second. Ah. Yeah, that put another spin on the continued silence. I winced, remembering certain conversations with Murphy.

Dawn rolled her eyes. "_Moron_," she said. "She's only the freaking _Vampire Slayer_. I thought you weren't going to be a Riley about it, but I guess I was giving you too much credit."

"It... wasn't about that?" I tried. Riley? What the hell was a Riley?

Dawn made a scoffing noise. "Yeah, and I might believe you if you sounded a little more sure of yourself when you said that. _Tell_ me you at least brought her something shiny to make up for it."

That, at least, I had covered. "If by shiny you mean _sharp_ and shiny..." I suggested, unsheathing the new knife at my belt to show her. It had a number of enchantments worked into it, most of them variations on subtle workings I'd been refreshing myself on before teaching them to Molly, and the base blade was one I'd seen Buffy stare at wistfully when we'd crashed through a medieval recreationist faire chasing Black Court the year before. I'd sort of hoped it would be a courting-type gift, not an apology-type gift, but beggars couldn't be choosers.

"Oooh," Dawn said, thawing a little at the sight of it. She was too much like her sister not to appreciate it, both their objections to the contrary; she unfolded one arm and skimmed her fingers through the air over the blade as though she were tasting its aura with her fingertips.

It was an endless mystery to me why Dawn hadn't shown the same supernatural gifts as her sister, given her presumably identical parentage; the White Council believed the Slayers were some sort of carefully regulated mixed breed, similar to half-fae changelings like Meryl who started showing traits of their nonhuman parent in their teens. Dawn had some wisps of tightly controlled power about her- she was probably a minor practitioner of some stripe- but she otherwise seemed like a perfectly normal human being.

"Okay," she conceded after a moment, and stepped off to the side, holding the door open. "I take it back; you're not totally hopeless. But I still can't actually invite you inside, you know that, right?"

"Right." I sighed. I hated the feeling of leaving my magic outside a threshold; I'd never liked being powerless. But the Watchers didn't _do_ invites, for good reason, so I had to put up with it.

I took a step forward, pressing into the invisible field of the threshold like the wall of a glycerin-enhanced bubble, until it parted around me- leaving my power firmly stuck to its surface. I _could_ still cast inside, if I really tried, but I'd only be able to manage maybe one percent of my usual oomph. Which Dawn knew perfectly well, having barely escaped my syrup and feather covered wrath in the past primarily due to that particular anti-guest feature.

I resheathed the knife, then reached into my duster for the second thing I'd been thoughtful enough to bring. "That doesn't stop me from bringing a welcome gift, though, does it?"

The smirk slid sideways off her face as I pulled a body-warmed glass bottle from a pocket. "You wouldn't," she said.

"Genuine Vermont maple," I taunted her, waggling the bottle in my hand.

Several long, shrieking minutes later, I found myself standing in front of Buffy's office, syrup still poised and Dawn's nose tilted disdainfully at me. Her composed expression was ruined only slightly by the rapidity of her breathing, which I was gallantly pretending not to notice. She'd have fit right in with the Carpenter teens in more ways than one, if only her hair was a little blonder; the thought made me smile.

"Think I've got a chance?" I asked her, relenting at last and putting the bottle away.

She sniffed, but unbent a little, returning the smile. "I guess we'll see," she said. Then she knocked on the door and ushered me inside.

* * *

I'm always surprised every time I set eyes on Buffy Summers; like Murphy, she's a stunning case of the package not matching the wrapping. Not that there's anything wrong with either package or wrapping; far from it. But to look at the woman known as The Slayer, dressed in clothes Thomas wouldn't be ashamed to see on his arm, smooth skinned and lithe limbed and gracefully petite, you'd never guess she was all spring steel and sharp teeth in a silken glove. As much in character as in body.

Her green eyes were reproachful as she stared in my direction, and she'd crossed her arms atop her desk. Every line of her posture gave the impression that she was upset with me.

I didn't quite look her in the eye as I approached. We hadn't soulgazed yet, though I was sure when it inevitably happened, she'd handle it more like Marcone than Susan...

...Stars and stones, I really _had_ shortchanged her when I'd stopped calling.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly. "Dawn said you found out about the mess with the White Court; I really should have called you in on it."

"I thought we had a deal," she said, coolly.

"You'd been out of contact for a few days, and when I figured out what the Malvora were up to..." I sighed, trying to think of a way to phrase it that wouldn't make me look like the chauvinistic ass people kept accusing me of being. "I remembered that you'd asked about William and Angelus."

"And you, what, thought I might be involved?" she asked, sharply.

"Hell's Bells," I blurted. "No, of course not. But-" I bit my lip. "You've met Thomas," I said. She didn't know he was my brother- that secret was closely kept, as neither Thomas nor I could afford the White Council knowing that my mother had had another son, much less one who was an incubus- but she did know I trusted him. "But you haven't met Justine. They- well. Let's just say I have a pretty good idea of what can happen when a White Court vampire falls in love."

She swallowed and went a little pale at that. "I see," she said, in a startled tone of voice.

I cleared my throat and decided to fess up outright, if only to get that look off her face. "So it's been brought to my attention that I might have underestimated you. And _slightly_ overreacted when I realized I hadn't heard from you since _before_ the case fell in my lap."

I reached for the knife again, unclipping the sheath from my belt, and lay it across her desk. "Happy unbirthday, in unrelated news," I added.

"Oooh." She unsheathed the knife, then ran a finger over it, fingers following the same path her sister's had though in more tactile fashion. Her expression softened- then turned wry, as she looked up at me again. "Bribery, sir; I cry foul."

"Just... appreciation," I said, "and a most sincere apology."

She considered that a moment; then sighed, and nodded. "And I guess I owe you one, too. An apology, I mean, not a knife!" She stroked a finger down the blade again, this time testing the edge, and looked surprised to see that it hadn't cut her finger. "Damn; you'll have to tell me what all you did to it, later."

"What makes you think I did anything to it?" I asked her, lightly. "It could just be dull."

"Because this is _you_," she said, dryly. "Mr. Wizard Who Likes Doing Magic So Much He Advertises In The Phone Book. Besides, it tingles." She lifted her finger and waggled it at me. "But you won't distract me from _my_ apology, either. We were out west- one of the deaths in Seattle was a Watcher, and her Slayer was taking it hard, so Giles and I went to deal with it personally. We thought it was just internal business, until Spike caught up with us and told us the Skavis were up to something."

The Skavis, the branch of White Court vampires that fed on human pain and despair, were very good at inducing suicidal depression in their victims. They'd killed more than thirty magically gifted women by making them look like they'd taken their own lives- the first step in a campaign to demonstrate it was possible to win the war against the White Council by eliminating the unprotected gene pool rather than directly fighting the current generation of wizards. I'd bartered the help of John Marcone- and Lara Raith, half-sister on the other side of Thomas' family and nominal head of the White Court- in a drastic effort to prove the benefits of any such plot wouldn't be worth the risk.

We probably could have used the Watchers' help in the whole ordeal. It _certainly_ would have been a lot more pleasant to fly out of that cavern on the wings of an explosion with the taste of Buffy's chapstick on my tongue, rather than Lara Raith's ravenous Hunger. But on the other hand- the fact that I _hadn't_ ever managed a date with Buffy, that the last woman I'd touched with intent had been one who loved me deeply, had probably saved my life that night.

"So I'm guessing you put the clues together, figured out the track pointed to Chicago, and then tried to contact _me_..." I sighed. Once events had started moving, I'd been a busy, busy boy.

She touched a finger to her temple. "Vampire. Vampire _Slayer_. These words are used together for a _reason_, you know," she said.

"Like peanut butter and chocolate, or sharp and shiny?" I asked, wryly.

She snorted, then looked down at her desk, touching the knife again. Then she resheathed it, and shifted her attention to a framed photograph positioned as though she'd been staring at it before I had arrived. It was a picture I'd seen before but never heard identified, of a smiling redheaded woman about college age with her arm around a more full-figured, serene blonde.

"Power and responsibility," she said, softly.

I frowned, wondering if one of the women was the Watcher who'd died. "Who was she?" I asked.

She stroked a thumb over the blonde in the picture, forehead furrowed, all the warmth in her expression fading to sadness. "Tara," she said. "Tara Maclay."

"She was the one who-?" I said.

Buffy blinked at that and turned her attention back to me, startled. "No; no, we lost her several years ago," she said. "All this just- reminded me of her."

It had happened in Sunnydale, then; Buffy seldom talked about the years she'd spent living in a town where the divide between our world and the Nevernever was more like a chain link fence than a brick wall, but knowing what I did about her history, I didn't blame her. "I'm sorry."

"It happened right before- well, right before. Tara was Willow's girlfriend." Buffy sighed, shifting her stroking thumb to the smiling face of the redhead.

I winced. Willow Rosenberg had been one of Buffy's closest friends- but she'd also been a warlock, one who'd gone unrecognized by the White Council for far too long. The Wardens hadn't had any contact inside their group since the death of Janna Kalderash, but they'd seen the Watchers defeat one foe after another without help for years. So after the war with the Red Court had diverted their attention they'd left them to it, ignoring any supernatural events that didn't breach the city limits. They hadn't realized just how serious a mistake they'd made until Rosenberg had attempted to raise a temple to Proserpexa and the ripples from that working had alarmed practitioners all up and down the West Coast.

_Thou Shall Not Reach Beyond The Outer Gates_. Of all the Laws of Magic, the Seventh is the one least frequently broken, and the consequences of doing so are rarely minor. Human magic doesn't work very well against Outsiders, but they're not so hampered when dealing with _us_. Luckily- if anything about that day can be called _lucky_- Ms. Rosenberg hadn't been trying to make a deal for power, or curse an enemy, or any of the other typical reasons for breaking that Law. She'd simply wanted an _ending_... to _everything_. She'd had the raw ability to make it happen, too, but gathering that much power had taken time, and the Wardens had arrived before she was finished.

It was only afterward that they traced just how far back the roots of her corruption went. Black magic is addictive, exhilarating, and so corrosive to the human mind and spirit that the standard White Council response to even a first-time breach is execution. There are exceptions; I'd been one, and Molly, my apprentice, was another. But it had taken three years for Ebenezar McCoy to straighten me out, and I was sure it would take at least that long for Molly to stop automatically reaching for the easy out, despite the fact that she'd only stepped over that line a couple of times with the best of intentions. A warlock like Rosenberg, who'd broken all but one of the other Laws over a period of _years_ before getting caught? There was almost nothing left in her of the shy, bright girl in Kalderash's reports. Still, she'd managed to keep up a façade for so long- I ought to have realized something really significant must have happened between the lines of the official reports to trigger her final break with reality.

The death of a loved one would definitely do it. I remembered Elaine, and Justin, and the fire, and sat down in the chair across the desk from Buffy, laying my unscarred hand over hers. "You don't have to tell me the rest."

She gave me a pained smile. "Xander was talking her down, you know. When your people showed up."

Not my people, I wanted to tell her; except they were, now, which is why Buffy had contacted me in the first place. I was the first Warden- at least the first I knew of- to ever have taken up the mantle after serving a term under the Doom of Damocles for a black magic conviction. I didn't think it would have worked, no matter what Xander had said, either; but I also knew I'd have felt no different if Molly had been as far gone as Rosenberg was. She was my best friend's eldest daughter. She was _family_.

I squeezed Buffy's hand. "I'm sorry," I said.

She blinked, green eyes shimmering a little, then shook her head and squeezed back. "No, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to unload all that on you; it's just that it still feels so close sometimes. I miss her. I miss Tara; I miss my Mom. And now Cath, and these other women- they were all such senseless deaths."

I didn't try to touch that one, either. For all the warlocks like the Korean kid whose blood had spattered on my cloak last year, there were also practitioners like Charity, who'd pulled back and renounced their magic when they realized exactly where they were headed... and there were also wizards like Justin Du Morne, who'd had the best of training and knew _exactly_ what he was up to when he chose to subsume another's will to his own. I wouldn't dare try to say what category Rosenberg best fit into.

"Hopefully, the network my friends and I are setting up will help people find support against predators like this in the future," I said, gently changing the subject.

"Right," she nodded, then let go my hand, crossing her arms on her desk with a smirk. "This Paranet thing- we've already heard from Elaine Mallory. She doesn't know you're working with us, does she?"

"Ah-" I scratched at my chin. I didn't exactly have a good _reason_ for not telling Elaine, but...

"Thought so," Buffy said, in satisfied tones. "She kept warning us that you're a bull in a china shop, but not to take offense because you generally mean well."

"She said _what_?" I shook my head, half-affronted and half-amused.

"She's an ex-girlfriend, I'm guessing?"

"Very ex," I nodded, ruefully. This latest case had stirred up a lot of those old memories and emotions, but neither of us had been ready to pick up where we'd left off, and it was just as well.

"And your current intentions...?" Buffy asked without missing a beat.

Because I'd known what I wanted where Buffy was concerned ever since we'd come back from our first real lives-on-the-line fight together, much to my consternation at the time. And given what seemed like encouragement from both Summers girls, I was hardly going to pass up such a gift-wrapped opportunity.

"...Are to ask a very lovely woman who has every right to tie me into a pretzel whether she'd like to have dinner with me instead," I ventured.

Delicate eyebrows flew up, and she eyed me up and down with a skeptically amused look.

"You'd make one _very_ unwieldy pretzel, I think," she said slowly, little lines around her eyes wrinkling in amusement. She wasn't quite my age- but she wasn't a teenager, either, and the moments in which her experience showed only made her more attractive as far as I was concerned.

"In the interests of scientific inquiry, you're welcome to try," I said, forging bravely on as I tried the looking-through-the-eyelashes thing out on her. "I think you'd be surprised just how flexible I am."

She flushed a little, but took that with sparkling eyes and a laugh trapped behind a shielding palm. "Okay, okay, feed me," she said, "But you'd better have something more than Pizza Spress or the Doublemeat in mind."

"Four stars enough for you?" I replied. Fortunately for the health of my pocketbook, Murphy had been able to continue paying me consultant fees while I collected Warden income, and my options weren't quite as limited as they'd been in the past. And I might have put my P.I. license to use and done a little _investigating_ into the local restaurants, once or twice.

She sat up a little straighter at that, some of her amusement fading as the seriousness of the offer sank in. She stared at me a moment longer- then really _stared_ at me, making an effort to meet my eyes. I gulped; this was the moment of truth. So I let her.

There was a flash of raw heat up my spine at the naked intensity of her gaze before the soulgaze kicked in- and then my Sight was triggered, and she _really_ took my breath away.

I usually See people in terms of metaphor, confusing symbols and scenes meant to expose the true foundations of their character. Some wizards hear music, or some other more straightforward sensory representation, but I've never taken the easy route with my gifts. And what I've Seen, I can never unSee, just like every other use of my wizard's Sight. What I saw that day in Buffy...

Murphy, under my Sight, always appears garbed in light like a warrior angel, sometimes battlestained but always glorious. That's the closest approximation I can give to what I saw in Buffy's soul, except to say that she was like the sun to Murphy's bonfire, too bright to look at directly for long. But in the shadows cast by that brilliant, searing light, horrors boiled, monstrous faces too awful to look at. And from below, a thicket of hands tugged at her ankles: male models' hands with blistered palms, skeletal hands moldering with rot, and women's hands, bloody and torn, all trying to tug this magnificent creature down for the shadows to feast on. Her face, above it all, was torn with fluctuating emotion: ecstasy, pain, exhaustion, serenity... every emotion, and none, all drawn to extremes, and she was reaching upward with all her might.

She was a survivor. But she hadn't let it stop her from _living_. And she was far, far above my reach.

So, nothing I hadn't already known, I thought, blinking tears away as I came back to myself in her office.

"Oh," she said, staring back at me, what looked like wonder and horror warring in her widened eyes.

"So," I said shakily. "Dinner?"

She blinked again, then smiled, a small, satisfied curve of mouth that seemed somehow more genuine than any of her other smiles that day. "Give me a few minutes to get ready," she said.

She got up from behind the desk, then came around it, and leaned down for a sudden, unexpected, casual kiss as she passed by my chair.

Our lips met. And. Yes. It was every bit worth the wait.

Her dress was even more inspiring, when she came back thirty minutes later; I felt positively underdressed beside her, an ugly duckling in her wake. She laughed at me, though, and told me I was perfectly imperfect just the way I was- and I got the impression she didn't just mean my clothing.

With such a spectacular beginning, though, of course the date itself was doomed to horrific mishap. But the anecdote of the steak, the ectoplasm, and the rain of pudding really belongs to another tale.

This is a tale of dramatic endings and beginnings.

The White Court is under new management, now. So is my heart.

And despite the potential dangers- I can't find it in myself to regret either change.

-x-


	5. Words Unspoken

**Title**: Words Unspoken

**Author**: Jedi Buttercup

**Rating**: PG-13/T

**Disclaimer**: The words are mine; the worlds are not.

**Summary**: _"Ah-ree! You should have told me your little friend would come by today," Thomas said, in that hideously thick accent he affected in order to be taken seriously as a stylist_. 1200 words.

**Spoilers**: Post-series fusion-AU for Buffy; post "White Night" for Dresden

**Notes**: For the August Ficathon. So, it turns out I'm not quite finished with this universe...

* * *

"Ah-ree, what a lovely surprise you have sent me today! Naughty, naughty; I will have words with you later."

My half-brother's voice was coy and very, very French on the message he'd left with the answering service, not at all what I'd been expecting when I'd stopped by the office to go through my mail for checks and meet with the one client I hadn't been able to get clear of that weekend. Buffy had assured me she'd find some shopping to do while I was busy, but her visits were still rare enough- even after I'd managed to source a route through the Ways from a little park by the Council House in Cleveland- that I wanted to spend as much of her time here actually _with_ her as possible.

Neither of us exactly held nine to five jobs, so you might not think it would be much of a problem to arrange our schedules to coincide. But when one party in the relationship is a wizard and the other is a Slayer- especially this wizard, and this Slayer, each with their own count of apocalypses averted and buildings demolished- finding a little peace and quiet together could be something of a challenge. I'd seen her covered in blood and bruises before I'd ever seen her naked, and we'd burned down our first ornamental fixture together more than a year before we'd finally burned up the sheets. We both had our own supernatural wars to fight, and in this business, the bad guys don't take vacations.

Thomas knew all that, though; and I'd specifically told him that I'd be home as much of that weekend as possible to spend time with Buffy. I couldn't figure out why he would have called the office; how would he have known when to reach me? The only possible person who could have told him was...

I swallowed and cut off the next message half-way through, hanging it up to dial the number of Thomas' expensive boutique, the Coiffure Cup. My girlfriend the _Vampire Slayer_ still didn't know that the White Court vampire I'd taken along on the Arctis Tor mission was also my brother, and she'd been asking about him just the night before. She'd wondered how I could hang out with a guy who had to rape other people's souls to thrive- and given her own history with White Court vamps who were _supposed_ to have gone straight and later fell off the wagon to rather disastrous effect, I understood her caution. So I might have mentioned that he'd found another arrangement that allowed him to feed without harming anyone... and I might have also forgotten to warn Thomas about it.

In my defense, though, I'd never expected her to actually _find_ which boutique he worked at and corner him there. Yes, I can be a little thick sometimes. Vampire. Slayer. And she'd probably heard one of my police contacts joke by now about the incident with the walking carpet, the chic apartment, the suspicious building security, and a certain amount of carefully calculated flouncing. To someone who didn't know about our shared mother or Thomas' current lack of standing among the Raith family leadership, that might sound a whole lot like evidence of a White Court con to get their hooks in the local Warden.

"Ah, this is Harry. Is Toe-Moss there?" I greeted the girl who answered as cheerfully as I could, hoping against hope that they were both still in one piece.

She giggled; yep, it was definitely one of the assistants who believed that Thomas and I were an item. Normally, I'd wince at the sound, but at the time I was just happy to infer nothing had gone obviously wrong in the twenty minutes since he'd called. "Just a moment! He's with a client, but he's about to put her under the dryer."

"I'll wait," I promised her, knotting my fingers idly in the phone cord.

I couldn't imagine what they would have said to one another. They'd kept their distance from each other on our trip through Winter, both of them instinctively wary of the other's supernatural heritage. Had she threatened him on my behalf? Had he returned the favor? Or had she just been looking for someone special to do her hair, and picked Thomas' place because she knew he was my friend?

That last would have been the easier answer. But nothing's ever exactly been _easy_ in my world.

My thoughts were starting to chase each other by the time Thomas picked up, and I sagged in relief at the sound of his voice.

"Ah-ree! You should have told me your little friend would come by today," he said, in that hideously thick accent he affected in order to be taken seriously as a stylist.

He sounded a lot... more cheerful than even my most optimistic projections would account for. "I know I said the secret would be safe with me, but you know what she is," I told him, guiltily. "I didn't want her stalking you to try to save me from you, or something, and she'd just have found the boutique in the end, anyway. I meant to tell you I'd told her, I really did, but..."

"I have no doubt you had much more _enticing_ things on your mind," he replied dryly- but he still didn't sound anywhere near as upset as I would have expected.

"Uh, yeah. Seriously, though, what happened? She didn't attack you or anything, did she? Is she still there?"

"In reverse order- yes, and no, and she made a hair appointment, of course," Thomas chuckled at me. "She asked to be treated _exactly_ as I would any other client," he added, heavy on the subtext.

Hells Bells. That meant- that meant she'd _wanted_ him to feed on her the way he did every pampered woman who passed through his chair, taking little sips of life energy with every shampoo, style, and weave. I choked, not sure which of them I was angrier at- her, for offering herself to an incubus to test him, or him for daring to touch her that way. "You _what_?" I sputtered.

His grin was audible in his voice as he replied, almost enough to wipe out the put-on accent. "Ah, but it was such a shame; I developed an allergic reaction to something in her hair and had to pass her to one of my assistants. Rob-air is looking out for her; she will be _nearly_ as beautiful as she would have been in my care when you see her next, I assure you."

"You... what?" I repeated myself as my brain froze up at the implications.

He snorted. "For a private investigator, you sometimes have trouble seeing the nose on your face," he chided me, in a lowered voice. "Congratulations." Then he spoke up again, presumably to add fuel to the gossip fire among his fans. "I must return to my clients; _bon soir_, Ah-ree."

I swallowed thickly as he hung up.

He hadn't been able to feed from her. She'd _burned_ him. Which meant...

Maybe it was time to trust her with a few more of my secrets.

-x-


End file.
